Assessing the sustainability of farming systems

Rob Lillywhite Warwick Crop Centre, University of Warwick

&

Matt Reed Countryside & Community Research Institute

What is a sustainable system?

• One that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

• A sustainable farming system should satisfy all three pillars of sustainability:

• economic

• environmental

• social

Systems sustainability

Social

Environment Economic

Systems sustainability

Social

Environment Economic

Sustainable?

• To intensify sustainably

• An integrated methodology that incorporates economic, environmental and social aspects of farming systems

• Common reporting unit (area, volume, other?)

• Broad enough in scope to be useable

• Narrow enough to distinguish between similar systems

Requirement

• Economic – Farm Business Survey (FBS)

• Environmental – modified Cranfield LCA model

• Social – by interview

• Results normalised on a 1 to 5 scale where higher scores represent greater sustainability

Methodology

• Based on Defra’s 10 robust and 25 main farm types

• Conventional and organic

• Thirty-two systems were defined:

• 4 x cereals and general arable cropping

• 4 x horticulture

• 3 x pigs

• 6 x poultry

• 5 x milk

• 8 x beef and sheep

• 2 x mixed

Farming systems

• Farm business income

• Net worth and investment

• Return on capital

• Resource use / livestock purchases

• Market concentration / dependency

• External resource dependency

• Labour demographics

• Labour income (profit, wages per hour)

• Total systems productivity

Economic indicators

• Direct and indirect energy use

• Land use

• Abiotic (non biological) resource use

• Greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions

• Acidification potential

• Eutrophication potential

• Pesticide residues and impact

• Landscape value (stewardship)

• Biodiversity

Environmental indicators

• Succession status

• Agency and well-being

• Social capital - Bridging, bonding and linking

• Business governance

• Social innovation

• Animal welfare

• Collected by face to face interview using established questions

Social indicators

• Weighting of individual indicators within one pillar or one pillar against another is used to reflect the views of the stakeholder

• Our approach is to set all indicators and pillars to have an equal weighting

• Everyone has an opinion and weighting might vary with system and desired outcome

• No consistent definition of sustainability is possible?

Weighting of pillars and indicators

• A spreadsheet based methodology (matrix)

• Each ‘model’ is discrete and only integrated by normalising the results to a common scale

• Each pillar or component uses its own functional unit since no common denominator could be identified

Output

Results 1

Conventional Organic

Economic 2.08 2.10

Environmental 1.62 2.43

Social 2.85 2.75

Total 6.55 7.28

Results 2

Horticulture Milk Beef & sheep

Economic 2.69 1.90 1.84

Environmental 1.56 1.97 2.20

Social 3.00 3.05 2.65

Total 7.25 6.92 6.69

• The methodology delivers ‘believable’ results that satisfy a sense check

• Robustness limited by small sample size in social assessment

• The maximum score for each pillar is 5 and therefore 15 across all three pillars

• Is it possible or desirable to set a minimum score for farming systems sustainability?

• Should the score for each pillar should reach 2 or 2½?

Discussion - scores

Results 2

Horticulture Milk Beef & sheep

Economic 2.69 1.90 1.84

Environmental 1.56 1.97 2.20

Social 3.00 3.05 2.65

Total 7.25 6.92 6.69

• The methodology uses 33 farming systems to represent all UK agriculture – is this viable?

• Specialisation and diversification have changed the character and profile of UK farming

Discussion – Farming systems

• Respondents have very different interpretations of what a sustainable farming system should deliver

• Economic and environmental analysis of large data sets and modelled systems is mostly robust

• Social analysis is difficult and expensive to undertake and small sample sizes are hard to interpret, however, the approach is conceptually robust and the approach has already been refined to facilitate data collection

Discussion - sustainability

Sustainable

Unsustainable

Eco

no

mic

Envi

ron

me

nta

l

Soci

al

Concept of sustainability

The industry now

Sustainable

Unsustainable

Eco

no

mic

Envi

ron

me

nta

l

Soci

al

Influence of intensification

Sustainable

Unsustainable

Eco

no

mic

Envi

ron

me

nta

l

Soci

al

Where we want to be

Sustainable

Unsustainable

Eco

no

mic

Envi

ron

me

nta

l

Soci

al

• This approach is sensitive enough to distinguish between different farming systems but ….

• Arbitrary levels can be set to define sustainable farming systems

• Most farming systems are unsustainable and intensification (of cash crops/livestock) is likely make this situation worse

• A farming system can only be as sustainable as the totality of its supply chain

Conclusions

Thank you

Thank you

Acknowledgments CCRI – Matt Reed and Paul Courtney Cranfield University – Adrian Williams, Kerry Pearn & Julia Chatterton Garden Organic – Francis Rayns & Ulrich Schmutz Organic Research Centre – Nic Lampkin & Bruce Pearce SRUC – Christine Watson University of Warwick – Catherine Keeling & Carla Sarrouy